Enough with the platitudes. If you’re going to change your life, how are you going to do it? What are you going to do today?

Today you are going to finish the household maintenance chores. All of them. You’ve been doing great: keeping up with the laundry and the dishes and cleaning the fridge and the bathrooms. You’re going to keep that up today.

Today you’re going to unpack another box, and put stuff in its proper place.

Today you’re going to work on your book, Scales.

Today you’re going to work on your business.

Today you’ve already worked on the next book, YX, getting it set up for Nanowrimo.

Today you’re going to complete the task for work, plus, you’re going to do the first step of the project you’ve been avoiding, AND you’re going to complete two requests.

Today you’re going to relax with your husband, as a reward for all of your efforts. You’ll talk with the kiddoes, as a reward for responsibility.

And day by day, you’ll make the life you want.

It’s easy to spin platitudes, to talk about change in the abstract. But change takes place in the trenches, in the dirt. Change is about making pennies amount to dollars. And you’re going to do it. You did it yesterday and the day before and the day before that. You’re going to do it today.

This week, too, confront and forgive. Oh, you don’t have to talk to anyone. But sign up for that forgiveness course you eyed online. Take the life-shattering moment you had this weekend watching Iyanla and expound on it. Explore it.

Because you won’t change any habits if you don’t forgive yourself for creating a life you didn’t want. Which is what you did: admit it. That’s why when you read Elizabeth Gilbert you broke down like she did. Because you did that. You built up the life you steadfastly hated, and then when you had to tear it all down and start over, you forgot to forgive yourself.

How can you change your life if you don’t give yourself permission to be happy?

So, until you can, go ahead and make the first bits a little painful. Get the basic habits of productivity and forward motion settled. Reward yourself with things that should fill your days, so you can feel like you “earned” them. And then start forgiving yourself, Jennifer, so you can take the joyous moments whenever they arrive, without having to feel like you bled for them first.